Supercapacitors ability to charge and discharge in a very short time span make them attractive for variety of unique applications. Conducting polymers (CPs) are widely explored as active material in supercapacitors due to the involvement of highly conducting long polymer chains in the redox process. Polyaniline, polypyrrole, polythiophene and its derivatives have been explored as active materials in supercapacitor. Amongst the conducting polymers, poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) is one of the very stable polymer, hence it has been used in several commercial devices.
Conducting substrates with woven fibers and nanopores are vital for fabrication of devices for energy storage and molecular separation. Silk cocoons (SCs) have unique structure comprising very high aspect ratio micro fibers woven into a thin layer. The SCs are insulators. Deposition of metal on the SCs can impart electrical conductivity. However, due to the woven structure of SCs, metal deposition by evaporation is not possible.
Article titled “Colorless multifunctional coatings inspired by polyphenols found in tea, chocolate, and wine” by T S Sileika et al. published in Angew Chem Int Ed Engl., 2013; 52(41); 10766-70 reports use of polyphenolic compounds present in tea, red wine, and chocolate to form thin adherent polyphenol films on substrates through spontaneous adsorption from solution. From this observation emerged a versatile and comprehensive approach to surface modification of a variety of solid, porous, and nanoparticulate substrates composed of metals, ceramics, and polymers.
The polyphenols (PP) in green tea adhere on variety of surfaces; hence they are suitable for developing a generic approach to prepare conducting substrates. However, the existing electroless metal deposition (EMD) methods are not effective to deposit metals on natural substrates.
Therefore, there is need in the art to provide effective electroless metal deposition (EMD) to deposit metals on natural substrates and effectively fabricate them in devices for energy storage and molecular separation.